42 THE ßAGPIPING PEOPLE T wo or three mornings a week, in summer, a tinker called Rob- ertson bagpiped the Gilchrist family from sleep half an hour before the time set on its alarm clocks. He played on the hoof, walking along the edge of a narrow plantation of birch trees "I thought you liked bagpipes," said Jim Gilchrist, teasing his father's short temper at the breakfast table. "Any time there's a pipe band on the wireless, you always have it turned up. You're the man who wants to go to the Edinburgh Tattoo. Military nos- talgia," he said, with a lighthearted, sneering conclusiveness. "It's like a plague in this country. I don't suppose you noticed, but last winter there seemed more pipe bands on the wire- less than usual. Suez." "Is that a fact?" Mr. Gilchrist re- plied. "N 0 different," said Jim, "from these countries you read about where 2E the radio stations pump out military music while the rebels and the govern- ment troops fight it out on the streets. Hungary," he said, the way he had said "Suez" a moment before. "I worry about your mind," said his father, before tasting his first spoon- ful of porridge. "A w, Sadie! Y ou haven't salted it! Again," he said wearily, plopping his spoon into his plate. "I did salt it," his wife said,- with her back to them as she turned the frying bacon and eggs with a fish server. Almost to herself, she added, "I salted it the same as I always salt it. " Sam Gilchrist's porridge never seemed salty enough on these morn- ings when Robertson's piping woke him up at six. While he sprinkled extra salt on his porridge, his son mea- sured a spoonful of sugar and then, when he knew his father was watch- ing him, sifted it over his porridge. 2F r o . .'.'.". l " . I' Pi p:l', p / . " L t: (( And this is the final question: W hat, in your opinion, is to become of us all " DECEMBER 19, 1983 "Men," Mr. Gilchrist said, with a jab of his spoon, "don't put sugar on their porridge." "I don't see why not," Jim said. "You put jam on your cheese." "When the tinker's pipes make him so bad-tempered," Mrs. Gilchrist said, "you'd think he'd take the trouble to ask the man to play half an hour later, when he's up anyway. Would that be unreasonable? " "Perfectly reasonable," said Jim. His father left the table and opened both kitchen windows. Robertson's pipìng was too far away to be loud, but there was no doubting it was there. "They're tinkers," said Sadie Gil- christ. "They're used to taking a tell- ing. Used to it," she emphasized, "week in, week out. It's not as if your father would be asking him never to play within our hearing. Half an hour. What's half an hour in a busy day?" "I don't mind when or where he plays," said Gilchrist. "He says he doesn't mind." She sighed with disbelief. "Y ou minded, loudly, at six this morning! He says he doesn't mind! You should've heard him. " The Robertsons and other tinker families lived in an untidy encampment two fields away from the Gilchrists' house. Tarpaulins were stretched over arched metal supports to form tents. It looked like a village of nomadic tribes- men. They possessed a small, open- backed lorry, three horse-drawn carts, and a number of ponies that grazed on lane-side grass or in the waste ground between the pillboxes and blast walls of a wartime anti-aircraft gun posi- tion. By nine in the morning, Robertson would take up his station on the tree- darkened minor road that descended to the ferry. All day in summer, he pipèd up and down the queues of waiting cars. At times, the queues were long * and profitable. Often in bad weather, only a few cars waited in a short, wet line. Commercial vehicles, whose drivers were working and not on the road for pleasure, gave no money and were a waste of the piper's wind and skill. Robertson wore a kilt, brown jacket, and off-white open-necked shirt, and went sockless in a pair of brown brogues blanched by a lack of polish and too much weather and walking. He was followed by his daughter. She was about seventeen, and she wore the same green dress